Mathematics in India inevitable makes one think of extra-ordinary figure of recent times. This was Srinivas Ramanujan. In his childhood, once a mathematics teacher, teaching in the eighth standard in a small school in South India, was telling the class that any number when divided by the same number becomes unity that is one. Ramanujan asked, ‘Sir is that true of zero, too?’ The teacher left speechless.
This mathematical genius of India was born in a poor Brahmin family in South India. Having no opportunity for a proper education, he became a clerk with the Madras Port Trust. But he was bubbling over with instinctive genius and played with numbers and equations in his spare time.
By a lucky chance he attracted the attention of a mathematician who sent some of his works to Cambridge in England. People there were impressed and a scholarship was arranged for him. So he left his clerk’s job and went to Cambridge, and during a very brief period there did work of profound value and originality.
The Royal Society of England went rather out of their was and made him a fellow. But he died two years later, probably of tuberculosis at the age of 33. He was one of the greatest mathematicians of the country.
Ramanujan’s brief life and death are symbolic to the conditions in India. Of our million’s how few get any education at all. Of even those who get some education, how few have anything to look forward to. If life had opened its gate to them and offered them food and education and healthy condition of living, how many among these millions could help to build a new India and new world.
By a lucky chance he attracted the attention of a mathematician who sent some of his works to Cambridge in England. People there were impressed and a scholarship was arranged for him. So he left his clerk’s job and went to Cambridge, and during a very brief period there did work of profound value and originality.
The Royal Society of England went rather out of their was and made him a fellow. But he died two years later, probably of tuberculosis at the age of 33. He was one of the greatest mathematicians of the country.
Ramanujan’s brief life and death are symbolic to the conditions in India. Of our million’s how few get any education at all. Of even those who get some education, how few have anything to look forward to. If life had opened its gate to them and offered them food and education and healthy condition of living, how many among these millions could help to build a new India and new world.
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